This invention relates in general to the processing and handling of products such as poultry and is related by common subject matter to our prior copending applications, Ser. No. 845,231, filed Oct. 25, 1977, Ser. No. 956,994, filed Oct. 31, 1978, and Ser. No. 6,238 filed Jan. 24, 1979.
According to our aforesaid prior copending applications, products in the form of fresh poultry are conveyed along a path of travel and are dropped at a bagging station for automatic loading into flexible film bags. The automatic bag loading operation at the bagging station has an operational cycle of predetermined duration that limits the rate at which products are capable of being bagged for a single conveyor line. To increase the rate of bagging, a plurality of bagging stations may be used. However, separate and parallel operating conveyor lines are ordinarily required for the respective bagging stations. The cost of separate conveyors may not however be warranted if, production rate demands are variable resulting in conveyors being idle when production demand is low.
The use of a single conveyor line servicing a plurality stations with means to distribute the drop off of poultry amongst the different stations, is disclosed in our prior U.S. Pat. No. 3,944,078. Distribution according to this patent is controlled by counters to equalize the use of the various stations rather than meet any varying production rate demands.
It is therefore an important object of the present invention to provide a single conveyor line capable of servicing a plurality of stations at which time consuming operations are performed, such as automatic bagging, in accordance with varying production rate demands.